HT Grant cut again!

[Guest monkeyx]

I agree, but we don't need to procure 20 other services we don't want at the same time just to get it

 

I agree with this, we have a similar situation in that we have to buy into loads services that we don't want or didn't ask for.

 

Can I ask how schools have managed to stop an LA top slicing broadband funding, as our LA used to make it a charge back system, they now top slice so that the school never sees the money. Never mind gets asked which sub services we actually want.

[sparkeh]

I agree with this, we have a similar situation in that we have to buy into loads services that we don't want or didn't ask for.

This is part of the issue for us as well and I can't see that this can be argued as being good value for money in the current climate, i.e. money going towards services that schools never use (I can see the headlines now).

Is there an RBC that works in this way as I would be surprised if this is financially viable from the RBC point of view.

[GrumbleDook]

@sparkeh

What you are talking about is more like a framework agreement. One or multiple suppliers produce a framework of services which can be mixed and matched by the RBC / LA / School. The services will range from the school connection to the WAN, The WAN itself, the central server farms, the kit in the exchanges, the kit in the CSF, the internet feeds in and out of the WAN (non-JANET feeds that is), email filtering, email hosting, web filtering, video conferencing, website hosting, online storage, DNS, IP Management, Firewall and security, authentication service (including LDAP, AD integration, UKAMF IdP - Shibboleth, etc) ...

 

The problem with framework agreements is that you tend to have a pricebook ... a fixed price for everything and it is done by unit (by user, by school or by LA) and because there is no guarantee of numbers for this the supplier will give a fixed price. There may be some scope for banded pricing ... ie the first 20 schools get x, the next get y and so on .. but this makes it a bit of a financial nightmare to reconcile ... especially if each school has to pay up front in the year and the 21st school comes online 3 months in ... do they get a lower price than the others?

 

The other problem is that once you start looking at the costs of services which some people may not want such as videoconferencing (not that expensive to be honest) is by the time you have paid for 20% of your schools to have it then it is actually the same price as making it available to all schools!

 

There are times when aggregated purchasing is clearly a big winner ... if you take email filtering (if you are not on an RBC line and running your own mail server then I presume you do have mail filtering) then the cost of the filter as an LA is far cheaper than buying it for each school individually.

 

The introduction of Public Sector Networks will mean that you will see more and more councils, police forces, Primary Care Trusts, etc share chunks of their network and if they do it over an existing WAN then all the better to drive down costs. It is a shame it is only just starting out ... if it had been pushed 3-4 years ago then we might be in a different picture.